REOCCUPYING ALEUTIANS

Southland Times, Issue 24873, 13 October 1942, Page 5

REOCCUPYING ALEUTIANS

DIRECT AID TO RUSSIANS (Rec. 8.40 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 11The Army and Navy Journal, which is an authoritative service publication, contends that the United States, in moving to reoccupy the Aleutians, is partly complying with M. Stalin’s wishes by establishing a second front directly affecting the fortunes of Russia. It says that our drive to eliminate the Japanese from the Aleutians is connected with the Soviet’s magnificent defence, for the Japanese Fleet lies athwart Vladivostock, blocking the transportation of needed supplies from the United States to the Soviet European armies, via the TransSiberian Railway. The reconquest of the Aleutians will enable the United States to co-operate with the Russian Army should the Japanese attack Siberia. The Japanese are beginning to suffer from lack of shipping, says the Stockholm correspondent of The New York Times, who quotes the Tokyo correspondent of the Hamburger Fremdenbiatt. To provide sufficient ships to maintain the supply routes to its South Pacific conquests the Japanese Government has decreed that shipments of coal, iron and steel within Japan henceforth will be carried by rail instead of steamers, resulting in the restriction of railroad passenger traffic. Cabinet members have warned the people not to under-estimate the enemy, also to prepare for areial attacks on the home islands. U.S. EQUIPMENT CONTROVERSY OVER USE (Rec. 8.45 p.m.) LONDON, October 12. The Daily Mail in a leading article, reviews the controversy in America whether vast quantities of weapons and equipment should be retained there for the army of 10,000,000 men which the United States is planning or whether they should be sent to sustain the existing fronts. “It is not only a question of supplies, but of strategy,” says The Daily Mail. “How soon are we to have the use of America’s giant production as it comes along, or must we wait until her army has reached the peak before attempting to settle the final account, with the Axis? There is only one explanation for the different ideas now making themselves heard. It is that a settled, determined world strategy is still non-existent. The elaborate planning and production machinery on both sides of the Atlantic is plainly not sufficient. We still need a general staff with a supreme commander in the west who can see and plan the war as a whole. , “The question must not be allowed to drift. We must have one policy. Without it we have not unity, but disunity; not victory, but defeat.”

FAMOUS FLYER’S DEATH JAPAN MAY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE (Special Australian Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 6.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, October 12. Japan may have been responsible for the disappearance of Amelia Earhart Putnam, the famous American woman flyer, who was lost in the South-West Pacific five years ago. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have learned too much about Japanese war preparations in this theatre to be allowed to live. This suggestion has been made by Charles Palmer, an associate of the lost flyer’s publisher-husband, George Putnam. Writing in the American magazine Skywards, he says that Mrs Putnam and Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, for Howland Island, 2500 miles north across the closelyguarded Japanese mandated islands. Fifteen hours after taking off, when the American flyers must have been over a Japanese island, their last brief message was received: “Circling, cannot see island. Gas running low.” Although the American Navy launched a 16 days’ search covering more than 100,000 square miles, no trace of the missing flyers was found. FINANCING OF FLIGHT Mr Palmer now asks: “In the light of recent events, was Mrs Putnam’s flight financed by the United States Government, so she could fly over the secrecyshrouded Japanese mandated area? Did the Japanese espionage discover this and liquidate her? Did the United States Navy, although realizing the chances were 1000 to one against finding the flyers, make that extensive search as a pretext for ranging in prohibited areas? . “Although Mr Putnam denies that the United States Government invested any money in the flight, it is known that the Government prepared Howland Island some months before the flight and stationed two cutters on the route from New Guinea. Why did Mrs Putnam refuse to disclose her position after leaving Lae, especially after circling for a forced landing? Did she want to hide from the world, especially Japan, that she had gone off her course into a Japanese area? “The recent United States Navy task force raids, obviously based on information, lend credence to the veiw that the Navy did not spend 250,000 dollars a day in a 16 days’ search for nothing.